On the road with the Terriers: Coach Young brings along a special guest

Wednesday

Mar 19, 2014 at 12:01 AMMar 20, 2014 at 12:45 AM

Wofford head coach Mike Young has his 11-year-old son, Davis, along for the NCAA tournament trip

By TODD SHANESYtodd.shanesy@shj.com

MILWAUKEE -- Wofford head coach Mike Young started talking about how great it was to have his 11-year-old son, Davis, along for the NCAA tournament trip and suddenly stopped in mid-sentence.Young looked around the gymnasium.“By the way,” he said. “Where is he?”While the Terriers were practicing in a side gym at Marquette, Davis and his friend, Drew Mason, son of Wofford administration assistant Dana Mason, were out shooting on the main floor of the Al McGuire Center. They waited for volleyball to finish and took over.Young’s wife and daughter won’t make the trip until today, when the Terriers take on Michigan in a 7:10 p.m. tip at the Bradley Center. So it’s just been dad and son since they boarded the bus Tuesday at Wofford and took a chartered flight to the Milwaukee.“It’s awesome,” Young said. “Having my 11-year-old with me is one of the special things about this trip. … He’s my guy. It’s just phenomenal to have him in the travel party. He’s more excited than I am. He’s more excited than these players. It’s been like a week of Christmas mornings for him with all this stuff. What’s wrong with that?”Davis goes to practices and has been in on the team meetings at the hotel. But he hasn’t been a distraction, Young said.“He might ask one or a half-dozen too many questions at times. But he’s curious,” Young said. “He’s been watching film. He knows more statistics than I do. He’s talking to me about matchups and foul issues.”

Wofford was visited by a player who is coming to the team in Ryan Sawvell, and a player who helped lead back-to-back Southern Conference championship seasons, Brad Loesing.Sawvell is transferring from Evansville, where he played three seasons and was on the Missouri Valley Conference all-freshman team. He came to watch the Terriers and is staying with his brother, who lives about half an hour away.“It’s gotten me really excited,” Sawvell said. “Wofford is a very good team. They play defense and rebound the ball. I committed in February and that’s when they went on that nine-game winning streak. It was great. I’m looking forward to seeing them in the tournament. Hopefully, they can take it to Michigan.”Sawvell will have to sit out next season and then will have one left with the Terriers in 2015-16. He said he will enroll in summer classes.“I just can’t wait to get to campus,” he said.Loesing, meanwhile, got to Milwaukee on Wednesday and went with the team to the shoot-around at the Bradley Center, practice at Marquette and then dinner with the team. The former point guard also came back to Wofford earlier this season after suffering an injury overseas.“I wouldn’t miss this for the world,” he said.

Wofford coaches have been burning the midnight oil trying to prepare for the game, but after gorging themselves on Italian food Tuesday night, they sacked out relatively early.So the brain trust put their heads together on Wednesday morning and then had team meetings. In the afternoon, it was a police escort about 10 miles from the hotel to the Bradley Center, where each team had 40-minute open practices preceded by media interviews. Wofford’s players at the podium were Lee Skinner and Karl Cochran, who used the term “tenfold” in one of his answers and had the official transcriber scratching his head. He’d never heard that word, apparently.Young was next, allowing the players to catch up with the rest of the team, and was a smash hit. He was compelling, engaging, personable and funny. When asked why he has been at Wofford so long, he said, “Nobody else will have me.”Everybody laughed, but then Young went into a heartfelt explanation of why he loves Wofford, closing his eyes for long periods while he talked.Afterward, during practice, he took extra time with a few reporters, talking to them about the great stories of Cochran, the all-league player who didn’t start at the beginning of the season; Aerris Smith, who went as long as he could on a severely injured knee; and Eric Garcia, the rookie point guard who didn’t have a turnover in the Southern Conference tournament.John Swinton’s birthday was Wednesday. The junior guard from Mount Pleasant turned 21. His mom sent a picture of him as a young boy wearing a Wisconsin shirt.“Destiny,” he said.

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